Seeding the Trade: Free books for booksellers from Alban Books!

ONE OF MY LONGSTANDING FRUSTRATIONS during my years as a Christian bookseller was, strange as it might sound, a shortage of books: not books to sell, but books to read. If you’ve been following this blog since the beginning, you’ll immediately understand what I’m talking about (here’s one of my previous posts on the subject, May 2008: A Problem I’d Love to Have) — I started out as a bookseller in the mainstream trade and one of the things I loved about the job was an endless stream of publisher’s proofs and advance reading copies (ARCs). They were one of our most effective and powerful selling tools: we’d read them, then we’d tell customers about them, and there’s nothing a bookshop customers love more than booksellers who know their books (except, perhaps, free books for themselves).

Then I joined the Christian book trade and my supply of books dried up: Christian publishers, with a few exceptions, simply didn’t get it — free books for booksellers? Unheard of: let them eat cake, or whatever the literary equivalent might be. All I could do, all most Christian booksellers can do, is rely on the publisher’s blurb which, not to put too fine a point on it, sometimes seems not much closer to reality than the ingredients list on a Tesco Value Burger (ahem)…

Alban Books

GOOD NEWS, PEOPLE: the good people at Alban Books have seized the initiative and decided that we can have our cake and eat it. Yes, that’s right: free books for booksellers!

The deal is straightforward: a new book each month that Alban Books think may be of interest to you, along with a list of other new titles from which you can request sample copies. To find out more and/or sign up, email Alban Books’ Marketing Manager, Elaine Reid (elaine.reid#albanbooks.com*), with the subject line “Seeding the Trade” — don’t forget to include your shop’s name and address!

Seeding the Trade: join the conversation in the Christian Authors, Booksellers & Publishers facebook group

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3 thoughts on “Seeding the Trade: Free books for booksellers from Alban Books!”

What a great idea, and well done to Alban Books – I hope you don’t mind if we jump on the bandwagon! (Hopefully we can encourage other presses to join in as well.)

If any booksellers would like preview copies of any of our books, let me know at sales at wide-margin dot co dot uk – again let us know your shop name and address. You can see a list of our books at http://www.wide-margin.co.uk/books

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